Lyra curled her hand around Rosario's fingers, clutching them hard in hers. She really had lost any semblance of pretending to know what the hell she was doing, she thought. Like it'd all sluiced off her as soon as she lay eyes on Johnny and Elaine again. But Rosario was still here, solid and reliable and genuinely the realest person in the room. Lyra looked at her for a long moment, seeing the way Rosario was pushing her own freakout back to take charge of Lyra's, and ask the questions Lyra was struggling to.
God, she fucking loved this girl. It gave her more strength than literally anything else she could imagine.
"I can't not," Lyra gave Rosario a twisted smile, shaking her head. She'd already decided she was hunting her father, same as Rosario, she wasn't gonna back out now, she'd never be able to sleep again, not knowing. Still keeping hold of Rosario's hand, she turned back to Johnny, whose friend was a friend of non-celibate saints. "Can— can you ask?"
"Course," said Johnny, with an easiness like he blew people's words apart every day. His chill was hovering somewhere between reassuring and unsettling, which was a little better than Elaine's vibe; that was for sure creeping toward unsettling— and Lyra wasn't thinking about the fact that she'd mentioned an archangel and then stared off into space, mmmhmm nope! Nope, she was paying attention to Johnny, who was waiting for her attention. "When were you born, Lyra?"
Part of Lyra was tempted to glance over at Rosario and let her take over, because being taken care of by Rosario would be so comforting right now, but her will and her jaw were already set. "December fourteenth, ninety seven. Um," her jaw faltered a little, anxious about taking these finals steps into the unknown, but Rosario's hand was in hers, and with a bit of a harsh growl telling herself not to be a fucking wuss, Lyra forced it out, forced herself to look up at Johnny who had taken out his phone. "Mom said she conceived me at a St Patrick's Day parade, it'd be somewhere in New York. That's gonna be relevant, innit?"
"Could be," Little John said, stopping himself from giving Elaine a significant look because he didn't want Lyra to read anything into it. It could be co-incidence, but what were the odds, there? Patrick definitely wasn't celibate, and there was the red hair, but Lyra deserved something more concrete before he went throwing looks about willy-nilly. "I'll message Tuck, figure out the best way to figure it out."
"My mom's name is Jem," Lyra blurted as Johnny started typing, hit with the sudden need to make sure that when these... these men were talking about her mom, that they weren't talking about her as some nameless woman. "Not that— maybe he ain't gonna remember— just... her name's Jem."